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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message -----
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=JoeParrish@compuserve.com href="mailto:JoeParrish@compuserve.com">Joe
Parrish</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=Propertalk@stsams.org
href="mailto:Propertalk@stsams.org">Propertalk</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Cc:</B> <A title=PROPERTALK.topic@ecunet.org
href="mailto:PROPERTALK.topic@ecunet.org">PROPERTALK.topic@ecunet.org</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Monday, January 25, 2010 5:33 PM</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> PREACHING RESOURCES FOR JANUARY 31 - Luke 4:21-30 - Part
2C</DIV></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4><STRONG>
<P>PREACHING RESOURCES FOR JANUARY 31 - Luke 4:21-30 - Part 2C -
1</P></STRONG></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4><FONT size=5>PREACHING RESOURCES FOR JANUARY 31 </FONT><FONT
size=4>(7 of the 70 plus preaching resources available at GoodPreacher.com for
this Sunday)</FONT><FONT size=5>:<BR></FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4><STRONG></STRONG></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4><STRONG>SCRIPTURE & SCREEN: Luke
4:21-30<BR><BR></STRONG>Some texts shock us, usurping our expectations. Movies
that go and do likewise can be a smart match with such texts, including this
one.<BR><BR>One of the most shocking and unsettling films is the surrealist,
silent, classic short film <I>Un Chien Andalou</I> (1929; dir. Luis Bunuel).
This sixteen-minute film opens with the infamous shot of the director slicing
open the eye of a woman (Simone Mareuil) with a straight razor. The initial
message is lacerating yet blunt: “What you, the viewer, are about to see will
assault you, including by overturning your expectations of film.” The movie
delivers on this threatening promise. With help from the Surrealist painter
Salvador Dali, Bunuel presents one bizarre and grotesque scene after another,
repeatedly catching the viewer off-guard. The plot–as much as there is one–is of
a romance between a man (Pierre Batcheff) and a woman (Simone Mareuil), who
appears to be married to someone else (Luis Bunuel). The two engage in a
relationship that is sometimes almost unsettlingly erotic, sometimes hostile.
Mixed in with this “plot” are strange, phantasmagorical images, such as a hand
that has a hole in it from which ants are crawling. One of the most famous
images from the film is that of the man dragging behind him the following items,
which are attached to him by ropes: two grand pianos, rotting donkey carcasses,
the stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments, and two bewildered priests
(Salvador Dali and Jaime Miravilles). Even the title, which translates as “An
Andalusian Dog,” is bizarre in that it appears, at least at first, to have
nothing to do with the film.<BR><BR>What does all this mean? Beats me. The
movie’s meaning is difficult to pinpoint; indeed, the meaning’s elusiveness is
one of the movie’s key themes. Our text from Luke does contain meaning, but it
is abrasive and shocking. Jesus chastises his hometown for its rejection of him,
thereby helping to fortify the very rejection of which Jesus speaks. Thus,
Jesus’ message to his fellow Nazarenes almost seems designed to be offensive. In
any case, the harsh message is offensive, just as <I>Un Chien Andalou</I>, with
its bizarre and grotesque departures from film conventions, is at times
offensive, or at least disturbing. Just as <I>Un Chien Andalou</I> slices open
the eye of the viewer, so also does Jesus slice open the minds and hearts of the
people in his hometown, as well as, to a lesser extent, the hearts and minds of
us readers/hearers of the text.<BR><BR>Indeed, challenging societal convention
is a salient feature of Jesus’ ministry as a whole, and sharply criticizing
societal conventions, including Christianity, is a salient feature of Bunuel’s
films, including <I>Un Chien Andalou</I>. In this film, for instance, Bunuel’s
image of the man dragging the Ten Commandments and priests with rotting donkey
corpses suggests that at least mainstream religion is oppressive, a burden. In
his Surrealist 1930 masterpiece<I> L’age D’</I>or (which means The Golden Age),
Bunuel intensifies his attack on religion through such images as a bishop being
thrown out of a window and, most shocking of all, a scene near the end of the
film in which a Christ-figure is associated with a murderous orgy. The movie
also intercuts scenes of Paris and Vatican City, showing both as sick with
decay. One scene shows buildings collapsing on a Sunday and indicates through an
intertitle that such activity is typical for a Sunday.<BR><BR>Bunuel also
attacks other aspects of bourgeois Western society, giving special attention to
the bourgeois Westerner’s inability to have a fulfilling romantic relationship.
The film features a man (Gaston Modot) and a woman (Lya Lys) trying repeatedly
to have a love affair but butting up against one obstacle after another. For
instance, when the two try to be intimate in a garden, the man gets distracted
by a statue of Venus. Then he is summoned to deal with a phone call. While he is
absent, the woman sucks erotically on the toes of the statue. The two people,
especially the man, are inept at having any real relationship. The movie is full
of such parodies and critiques, with one of Bunuel’s main points being to expose
and deride the impotence and hypocrisy of Western, bourgeois
society.<BR><BR>Jesus, also, is providing a severe critique of the society in
front of him, his hometown. Indeed, his ministry, as we see throughout Luke,
challenges religious authority and conventional values. Jesus’ words in this
text are shocking and lead to a climax and denouement reminiscent of a
Surrealist film: The crowd devolves into a mob and tries to throw him off a
cliff, but he somehow gets away.<BR><BR>We preachers, then, can offer a new
perspective on this passage by highlighting how it resembles these
counter-cultural Surrealist films, striving to slice open our expectations with
the straight razor-side of the Good News. <BR><BR>David von
Schlichten<BR><BR><BR><BR></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>